When many people talk about businessmen in the late Qing Dynasty, most of them think of Sheng Xuanhuai, Hu Xueyan, Zhang Jian, and the above three people are indeed very representative, but these three people are just famous for doing foreign affairs, so people will think of them when they talk about businessmen in the late Qing Dynasty, and in the same era, there are many obscure businessmen with huge financial resources.

Hong Xuwei is such a businessman, born in a traditional business family in Shanxi, his family was also brilliant in the early years, but these decades is not as good as a generation, when it was passed to Hong Xuwei's hands, the tea and silk brocade business has long been done, and some other businesses are gradually withdrawing, leaving only a small-scale prosperous ticket number, but the Hong family is really unlucky, Dingcheng ticket number due to its small scale, so I don't want other ticket numbers to spread all over the same, but the business is mainly concentrated in Shandong and Zhili, And Shandong and Zhili were the hardest hit areas of the Boxer Rebellion in the year of Gengzi.

This Boxer rebellion had nothing to do with him, but unfortunately, those mobs burned and robbed one of his Beijing branches, and as a result, those mobs directly robbed piles of treasury silver, and at that time, in addition to the mob and even the officials and soldiers who came to drive the mob away, anyway, in the end, they were robbed, and there was no silver scum left.

If it's just that, forget it, after all, the ticket number has its own way of apportioning the risk, and there will not be too much cash in a fixed semicolon, so there is not much silver in the Beijing branch, and tens of thousands of taels of silver have been robbed. But the key thing is that after those depositors saw that the Dingcheng ticket number was robbed, they were afraid that their money would also be robbed and they would not be able to withdraw it, so they triggered a run.

Hong Xuwei hurriedly transferred the silver from other places, found a peer to dismantle, and finally survived, but it was a heavy loss before and after.

And after Gengzi year, the life of Shanxi ticket number was not good, seeing that the days were becoming more and more tragic, he was thinking about reforming his own ticket number while also looking for new ways to invest.

When passing through Tianjin, I heard that a new Fuyuan Machinery Factory with assets of several hundred thousand yuan had been established in the British Concession of Tianjin, and I also paid a little attention to it in the spirit of a capitalist.

This inquiry only learned that this Fuyuan machine qì factory is not simple, there is a yarn factory with assets of 200,000 taels of silver, and it is said that it is preparing to set up a machine qì factory to produce ordnance, this factory has not yet been set up, and the funds have already collected more than 300,000 taels of silver, and it is said that it is far from enough, and it is necessary to continue to raise funds.

When he looked at the names of Yuan Shikai, Duan Qirui, Feng Guozhang, Zhao Dongyun, etc., he seemed to see a big gold ingots beckoning to him.

There are so many big guys standing behind this machine factory If he doesn't make money, he Hong Xuwei hanged himself directly, as the so-called time does not treat people, he immediately found Zhao Chenbin, and the first sentence of the exit was: "How much more do you need?" ”

And these words also scared Zhao Chenbin, thinking that the people who came out of here opened their mouths and said how much it costs, do you have hundreds of thousands?

Not to mention, Hong Xuwei can really take it!

As a member of the Shanxi merchants, although his family has declined, and the ticket number has also been hit, the emaciated camel is bigger than the horse, squeeze it here, move it there, and take out hundreds of thousands of taels of silver It is not a big problem for Hong Xuwei.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have opened his mouth so confidently and asked how much more you want.

These two people sat down immediately, Hong Xuwei showed his heyday ticket number, to show that he was not short of money, and Zhao Chenbin also showed the back of the Fuyuan Machinery Factory, and vigorously touted: "The proprietor of my family is a Beiyang upstart, the guest of Lord Yuan, and this time the machine is set up with the strong support of Lord Yuan, not only that, Lord Feng, Lord Duan, Lord Wang, Lord Zhou and other more than 20 Beiyang military and political dignitaries have invested money, and the custody is not profitable." ”

Hearing this, Hong Xuwei was puzzled: "They invested money in, not dry stocks?" ”

In recent years, it is not uncommon for officials to participate in shares, but what is rare is that officials take out real money to participate in shares, and in other places, they are directly sent to officials.

Zhao Chenbin was ashamed: "Of course you have to give money, hmph, Lord Yuan personally invested 10,000 taels of silver, who would dare to take it for nothing!" ”

Zhao Chenbin said that this is confident, this Fuyuan Machinery is not a pure commercial enterprise, nor is it a government-run enterprise, he is more like a Beiyang collective enterprise, which can be said to be a high-level Beiyang enterprise.

And in this group of people, except for Yuan Shikai, others are not qualified to let Zhao Dongyun go to send shares, but Yuan Shikai doesn't care about that little money, he invested 10,000 taels of silver not for profit or anything like that, he wants to continue to use the excuse to supervise the Fuyuan Machinery Factory, it can be said that the political significance is greater than the economic significance, Yuan Shikai personally took the money out, who dares to say that he is more awesome than Yuan Shikai and wants to take the dry shares for nothing, Yuan Shikai slapped him to death!

In addition, for other Beiyang high-level leaders, they can't lose money anyway, and this arsenal is making munitions for their own Beiyang New Army, so it is nothing to invest with some surplus money behind Yuan Shikai, it is purely political speculation.

As soon as he heard that Yuan Shikai personally took out real money, Hong Xuwei's eyes brightened!

When the two sides showed off their assets and backs, it can be said that both parties were very satisfied, and Hong Xuwei said: "Money, it's definitely not a problem, I dare not say more, three or five hundred thousand can still be taken!" ”

However, Zhao Chenbin snorted coldly, you have so much money and can't give you so many shares, although the total share capital has not yet been determined, it is about seven or eight hundred thousand, because less is not enough, and more cannot be used for the time being, as for the follow-up expansion funds, we will talk about it later.

In this case, if you take out three or five hundred thousand, won't my Zhao family be unable to control the machine?

So I didn't say yes directly, but said that I would have to wait for a while before replying!

Hong Xuwei is not the only one who came to the door to buy shares, he just left on the front foot, and several wealthy people with strong financial resources came in a row, and dozens of people with smaller financial resources came one after another.

In addition to these people who want to directly invest in shares, many banks and money banks also came to ask if they wanted to take out loans, including Hong Xuwei and Zhou Xuexi.

Let's talk about Hong Xuwei first, although he wants to invest directly in Fuyuanji Factory, but listening to Zhao Chenbin's tone, even if he accepts his direct shares, he will not accept too much, because the Zhao family needs to ensure that he is the largest shareholder of Fuyuanji Factory, so he would rather disperse the equity.

At the same time, in order to control the controlling stake, he also heard that Zhao Chenbin borrowed money everywhere, and planned to use Fuyuan Yarn Factory as collateral for loans. As for borrowing money to borrow money, anyway, his own is the ticket number, and the absorbed funds must be lent out to generate interest, lending to Fuyuan Yarn Factory is low risk and high profit, and he took 10,000 steps back and said that even if the money cannot be recovered, he will make money by taking back the mortgaged Fuyuan Yarn Factory.

Different from Hong Xuwei's thoughts, Zhou Xuexi came to ask if he wanted money purely from political considerations, and Yuan Shikai instructed him that this time the preparation of the Fuyuan Machinery Factory is not just as simple as running a commercial enterprise, it is more related to the important task of Beiyang's future ordnance supply.

Therefore, out of political considerations, Tianjin Guanyin has the obligation to provide funds to Fuyuanji Factory, of course, the interest is certainly not low, but this Tianjin Guanyin is a Beiyang asset anyway, and this fund transfer and follow-up repayment are also more flexible operation system, which is more convenient and safe than borrowing other ticket numbers and foreign banks.

In the face of these large and small businessmen and banks, Zhao Chenbin felt extremely satisfied!

This feeling of controlling tens or even millions of silver investment projects is really good, which makes Zhao Chenbin very fascinated.

"Because there is a lot of room to choose, and at the same time, in order to protect our controlling stake in the machine, there are more participants in the follow-up fundraising, not counting the investment of your adults, and the rest of the businesses participating in the shares have a total of 28 people, most of whom are Zhili, Shanxi, and Shandong businesses. In this way, counting all of you and our Zhao family, there are a total of 53 large and small shareholders, raising a total share capital of 830,000 taels! It was a middle-aged man in a horse coat who spoke.

And this person is Zhao Dongping's father, Zhao Dongyun's third uncle Zhao Chenluan, this time he went north specially to set up a machine factory! Some time ago, Zhao Dongyun sent a message to his hometown, saying that he would use a large amount of silver to set up a factory, and said that it was very profitable, and it was done together with other high-level executives in Beiyang.

Although the other rooms of the Zhao family have many doubts, but under the persuasion of Zhao Chenliang, they still scraped together a part of the funds, on the one hand, it is out of the consideration of family help, because now Zhao Dongyun is already a positive third product, and his career seems to be thriving, it is said that he is valued by Lord Yuan, so Zhao Dongyun is naturally regarded as the pillar of the Zhao family's power, and it is appropriate to contribute some money to help one or two.

In addition, Zhao Chenliang saw that his son had been mixing with Zhao Dongyun since he arrived in Baoding, and he had been promoted by Zhao Dongyun as an alternate magistrate, and he was also a full official, so in this case, he naturally valued Zhao Dongyun more and more, in addition to preparing his own family to take out the silver, he also persuaded the other four rooms and the big house.

At the same time, Zhao Dongyun also sent a message to his hometown, saying that there was a shortage of manpower available in Baoding, and if there were outstanding children in the family who could come to Baoding for development, he would arrange it as appropriate, which was also the reason for the strong support of the Zhao family.

Zhao Dongping's example is in front of him, he got an official position less than a year after he went to Baoding, and he was still on an errand in the promising Beiyang New Army, how can this not make the rest of the Zhao family blush.

For many reasons, in the fourth room of the Zhao family, in addition to the second room where Zhao Dongyun is located, Zhao's mother took out 20,000 taels of silver to support her son's career, and the big house Difeng waved his hand to give 60,000 taels of silver, and they mainly wanted to send a few children to Zhao Dongyun to fight for a way out, after all, if you just want a top grade, it won't cost a few silver, but you can't buy a real job in the Beiyang system with money, let alone the personal care and promotion of big people.

Zhao Chenliang's third room has relatively thin financial resources, and most of the assets are in fixed assets such as fields and shops, and there is not much spare money that can be taken out, but gritted his teeth and came out of 30,000 taels, as for the fourth room, he thought that they had invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the second room, and the big house and the third room were also tens of thousands of dollars out, so I thought that anyway, with Zhao Dongyun, it is estimated that I can't lose, even if I want to lose, I will lose it with everyone, but if I can earn it, I can also earn it together, so I also invested 40,000 taels of silver with the mentality of following the trend.

With the addition of the four rooms in this way, the Zhao family has made up 150,000 taels of silver!

However, relying only on these 150,000 taels of silver is far from enough to control the Fuyuan Machinery Factory, so Zhao Dongyun has to find another way.